Airlines queue up to make Boeing pay for aircraft faults and delays

Boeing looks set for a succession of compensation claims following problems with some of its aircraft and delays in deliveries of new ones this year.

The beleaguered aircraft manufacturer has already had to pay out £126m to Alaska Airlines to make up for losses the airline suffered following a mid-air door-panel blowout on a Boeing’s 737 Max 9 in January.

Now United Airlines has said it suffered pretax losses of $164m (£132m) in the first quarter of this year, which it blamed on having to ground its Boeing 737 Max 9 fleet for three weeks for safety inspections after the Alaska Airlines incident.

Aviation experts believe this could lead to a series of financial claims against the plane-maker.

John Grant, chief analyst for global travel data firm OAG, told i he thought Boeing would end up paying United and other businesses affected by both the grounding of aircraft and the delay in delivery of new ones.

He said: “Absolutely, they have to. It will clearly damage their [Boeing’s] finances over time but how they account for that is yet to be seen.”

Scott Kirby (inset), United Airlines chief executive, said this week that safety was “at the core of everything we do” but that the groundings had affected the firm’s first-quarter earnings.

He said: “If the Boeing Max 9 hadn’t been grounded we would have been profitable for the quarter.”

Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair’s chief executive, announced last month that the Irish firm would receive only 40 of the 57 aircraft it had ordered from Boeing which were due to be delivered before the end of June, forcing it to cut flight frequencies this summer.

Mr Grant said: “Ryanair will certainly have a claim against Boeing for non-delivery and operational disruption, and at some point we should expect to see that within one of their quarterly performance reports.” However, he did not expect Ryanair or other airlines to try to recoup financial losses directly through fare increases.

Asked if he expected flight prices to rise, he said: “Not significantly, but as always the principles of supply and demand apply, and demand remains strong.

“As consumers we have to realise that the aviation industry has not been immune to rising costs like every other industry, salaries have increased, the price of oil is now edging upwards as economic demand builds and these factors all have to be covered by airlines in their pricing.”

Rhys Jones, aviation editor at the travel news website Head for Points, agreed, but added that the reduction in flight capacity was likely to have an impact on prices in the short term.

Boeing has been approached by i for comment.

Airlines have a net capacity that affects flight prices – when there are fewer seats available airlines set higher prices.